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Measure Progress Using Working Hours

The document discusses measuring construction project progress using working hours as an alternative to the typical Earned Value Management (EVM) approach. There are three key reasons for using working hours: 1) problems with upfront cost loading in EVM can misrepresent progress, 2) working hours provide an additional evaluation criteria, especially for large projects, and 3) cost information may be unavailable early in projects like cost-plus contracts. An example shows how to calculate progress percentage using working hours instead of costs.

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LaiqueShah
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27 views

Measure Progress Using Working Hours

The document discusses measuring construction project progress using working hours as an alternative to the typical Earned Value Management (EVM) approach. There are three key reasons for using working hours: 1) problems with upfront cost loading in EVM can misrepresent progress, 2) working hours provide an additional evaluation criteria, especially for large projects, and 3) cost information may be unavailable early in projects like cost-plus contracts. An example shows how to calculate progress percentage using working hours instead of costs.

Uploaded by

LaiqueShah
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Measure Progress using working

Hours, Why and How?


Measure progress is one of the most important operations in project
planning and control. Most of the planning engineers and construction
managers prefer to measure the progress using the Earned Value
Management (EVM).  However, sometimes it is required to measure the
progress using the working hours or what so-called level of efforts. in
this article, I will explain why and how we could measure the
construction projects progress using working hours.

A: Why we measure the progress using


money or Earned Value Analysis (EVA)?
According to PMI ” EVA provides a method that permits the project to be
measured by progress achieved. The project manager is then able, using
the progress measured, to forecast a project’s total cost and date of
completion, based on trend analysis or application of the project’s “burn
rate”. This method relies on a key measure known as the project’s
earned value.” Accordingly, we need to convert all the project activities
into similar pieces of work and each piece of work should have its own
weight (quantity). Therefore, the cost is used in the earned value
management to evaluate the progress since the cost of the project can
be summed among the project. Using this method we are comparing
apple to apple.

Example of using Earned Value to Measure the progress:

1- Activity 1 cost = 100 USD

2- Activity 2 cost = 500 USD

3- Activity 3 cost = 1000 USD.

Accordingly, the project budget cost = 100 + 500 + 1000 = 1,600 USD.

Progress update: Activity 1 % complete = 10%, Activity 2 % complete =


40%, Activity 3 % complete = 20%

Earned value = 10% * 100 + 40% * 500 + 20% * 1000 = 410 USD

Progress % complete = 410/1600 = 25.62%

B: Whay measaring progress using working


hours?
There are 3 main reasons for using working hours as an alternative or
supportive method to Earned Value to measure the progress:

1- Problems in the project cost loading: When there are problems in


the project cost loading it will affect the results of progress percentages.
Such problems as frontloading where the contractor assigns more cost
for substructure and less cost for superstructure and finishes to gain
cash flow at the beginning of the project. Another example of cost
loading problems is to have equipment with a very high price where the
efforts involved in procuring and installing this equipment does not worth
the progress % assigned by cost.

2- Another evaluation criteria: Sometimes it is good to have more


than one evaluation criteria especially in big construction projects where
you need accurate reports a much as you can.

3- Lack of cost information: In some cases, the cost could be hard to


be determined at the beginning of the project. Like the cost-plus
contracts, the client could select cheap or expensive materials, but the
working hours are the same.

C: How to measure progress using working


hours?
Very similar to the EVM, we need to convert all the activities into working
hours. taking sample example of the EVM we will see different results as
follow.

Example of using working hours to Measure the progress:

1- Activity 1 hours= 1000 hours

2- Activity 2 hours= 100 hours

3- Activity 3 hours= 500 hours.

Accordingly, the project budget cost = 1000 + 100 + 500 = 1,600 hours.

Progress update: Activity 1 % complete = 10%, Activity 2 % complete =


40%, Activity 3 % complete = 20%

Earned hours= 10% * 1000 + 40% * 100 + 20% * 500 = 240 hours

Progress % complete = 240/1600 = 15%

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